Blog 10, Week 12

Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGF-FUykln8

Project Management: Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.

• Triple Constraint: A projects vision is to be clear, concise and comprehensible. Time, Cost and Scope. The Importance of the triple constraint to project management is, that all projects are limited by these three constraints.

Describe the two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgdChg5kF1E

• Project Charter: Document issued by the project initiator that formally authorises the existence of a project and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organisational resources to project activities. 
  • Elements:

• Project Scope- defines the work, describes the need, justification, requirements and current boundaries for the project
• Objectives- are quantifiable criteria  that must be met for the project to be considered a success.
• Project Constraints- are specific factors that can limit options.
• Assumption- are factors that are considered to be true, real, or certain without proof or demonstration

PROJECT PLAN: is a formal, approved document that manages and controls project execution.
        Elements:
1. It should be easy to read
2. Communicated to all key participants
3. Prepared by the team, rather than by the individual project managers
4. Appropriate to project size, complexity and criticality
5. Easy to understand



Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success

THREE PRIMARY AREAS:
Communication
Change
People

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLrnJc2Tz44

Outline two reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects succeed

Fail	Succeed
Inability to communicate effectively with employees.	Reduces costs.
Unable yo respond to change in the business environment.	Concentrate resources on core business

Blog 9, Week 11

What is your understanding of CRM?

1. CRM ( CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT) is a system that manages all aspects of a customers relationship with an organisation.
2. The relationship formed between customers and the business created profitability, customer loyalty and protection.
   - Increase customer revenues
   - Make call centres more efficient
   - Provides better customer service

Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management -

Operational	Analytical
supports traditional transactional processing for day-to-day front-office operations or systems that deal directly with the customers	supports back-office operations and strategic analysis and includes all systems that do not deal directly with the customers
Focuses on organising and simplifying the management of customer information. It uses a database to provide consistent information about a company’s interaction with a customer	Analytical CRM uses data mining to provide strategic data about customers. Data mining uses various modelling and analysis techniques to find patterns and relationships to make accurate predictions

Describe and differentiate the CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments
Marketing Operational CRM technologies:

• List generator - compiles customer information from a variety of sources and segment the information for different marketing campaigns.
• Campaign management system - guides users through marketing campaigns
• Cross - selling and up-selling
  - Cross-selling - selling additional products or services
  - Up-selling - increasing the value of the sale

Customer service operational CRM technologies
Contact/call centre

• automatic call distribution
• interactive voice response
• predictive dialling
• emotion detection

Web-Based self service system

• click-to-talk

Call scripting system

Sales department Operational CRM Technologies

1. Sales Management: co-ordinates, organises, helps sale reps and their accounts.
   Calendars, alarm reminders, document generation are all used for planning.
2. Contact Management: supplemental sales information. Organisational Charts and detailed customer notes are used.
3. Opportunity Management: targets sales opportunities by finding new customers or companies for future sales.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoeNlFCJCDc

How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?




Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses

Business Intelligence: refers to applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to and analyse data and information to support decision-making efforts.

Explain the problem associated with business intelligence - Describe the solution to this business problem.

• Problem: Most oprganisations are data rich but information poor. The data being generated is increasing at a rapid pace. Different systems hold different data but none of the systems correspond with one another which gives employees the inability to make business decisions quickly.
• Solution: To improve the quality of business decisions, managers can provide existing staff with BI systems and tools that can assist them in making better, more informed decisions.
  For example - Law Enforcement - Tracking Crime patterns locations, and criminal behaviour; identifying attributes to assist in solving criminal cases.

Explain the problem associated with the business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j5J7lXav7Y

Problem: Most organistions are data rich but information poor. The data being generated is increasing at a rapid pace. Different systems hold different data but none of the systems correspond with one another which gives employees the inability to make business decisions quickly.

Solution:  To improve the quality of business decisions, managers can provide existing staff with BI systems and tools that can assist them in making better more informed decisions.


What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining

• Cluster Analysis - technique used to divide an information set into mutually exclusive groups such that the members of each group are as close together as possible to one another and the different groups are as far apart.
• It segments customer info to help organisational identity customers with similar behavioural traits.

• Association Detection - reveals the degree to which the variables are related and the nature frequency of these relationships in the information
• Creates rules to determine the likelihood of events occuring at a particular time.

How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

Get their attention

Value their time

Over-deliver

Contact Frequently

Generate a trustworthy mailing list

Follow up

Blog 8, Week 9

Define the term operations management

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeeTy3YaMu0

Operations management is the management of systems or processes that convert or transform resources into goods and services.

     - Information technology is used in operations management to identify and improve the business process.

Explain operations management's role in business -

Managers use IT to heavily influence operations management decisions:

• What resources will be needed and in what amounts?
• When should the work be scheduled?
• Where will the work be performed?
• How will the work be done?
• Who will perform the work?

Describe the correlation (relationship) between operations management and information technology -

The OM has the responsibility of delivering the company's profits by getting a quality product out on time, as efficiently as possible, with the high levels of customer service.

Explain supply chain management and its role in business

Supply Chain Management involves the management of information flows between and amongst stages in a supply chain to maximise total supply chain effectiveness and profitability.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi1QBxVjZAw

A supply chain involves three segments:

- Upstream, where sourcing or procurement from external suppliers occurs.

- Internal, where packaging, assembly or manufacturing takes place.

- Downstream, where distribution takes place, frquently by external distributors.

LList and describe the five components of a typical supply chain

Plan: This is the strategic portion of supply chain management. A company must have a plan for managing all the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for products or services. A big piece of planning is developing a set of metric to monitor the supply chain so that it is effective, costs less, and delivers high quality and value to its customers.

Source: Companies must carefully choose reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services required for making products. Companies must also develop a set of pricing, delivery, and payment processes with suppliers and create metrics for monitoring and improving the relationships.

Make: This is the step where companies manufacture their products or services. This can include scheduling the activities necessary for production, testing, packaging, and preparing for delivery. This is by far the most metric-intensive portion of the supply chain, measuring quality levels, production output and worker productivity.

Devliver: This step is commonlyreffered to as logistics. Logistics is the set of processes that plans for and controls the efficient and effective transportation and storage of supplies from suppliers to customers.  During this step, companies must be able to recieve orders from customers, fulfil the orders via a network of warehouse, pick transportation companies to deliver the products, and implement a biling and invoicing system to facilitate payments.

Return: This is typically the most problematic step in the supply chain. Companies must create a network for receiving defective and excess products and support customers who have problems with delivered products.

 

Define the relationship between informaion technology and the supply chain.

 - Technology advances in the fice SCM components have significantly improved companies' forecasting and business operations

- Integrated Systems provide companies with greater visibility over the supply chain inventory levels

- IT's primary role is to create integrations or tight process and information linkages between functions within an organisation.

 

 

Blog 7, Week 8

Chapter 7 Questions-

Explain the business benefits of using wireless technology.
Benefits of woreless technology:

• For people who are on the move and like to access the internet in various places
• It goes where cables and wires cannot
• Access to live data enabling better decision making

Describe the business benefits associated with VoIP

voice over internet protocol (VoIP): enables consumers to make calls over the internet EXAMPLE: SKYPE.

                     

 

CHEAP AND LOW OPERATING COSTS

EASY TO RELOCATE AND MAKE CHANGES

MANY FEATURES AT A LOW COST

EASIER DEVELOPMENT

INTEROPERABILITY AMONG SYSTEMS

APPLICATION INTEGRATION

Compare LANs and WANs

Local Area Connection (LAN) - is designed to connect a group of computer in close proximity to eachother. For example, a school. It is a useful system of sharing resources such as files, printers and other applications. On the other hand a Wide Area Network (WAN) - spans a large geographic area, such as a state or country. They often connect multiple smaller networks; local area networks.

 

Describe RFID and how it can be used to help make a supply chain more effective.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies use active or passive tags in the form of chips or smart labels that can store unique identifiers and relay this information to electronic readers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNPDgudPmXE&feature=related

Identify the advantages and disadvantages of deploying mobile technology -

ADVANTAGES

Transforming how we live, work and play

Continually being upgraded

Additional functionality

Networks are advancing rapidly

DISADVANTAGES

Symptoms of radiation

Addiction may lead to social problems

Cyber bullying

Blog 6, Week 7

Chapter 6 Questions

List, describe, and provide an example of each of the five characteristics of high quality information.

The characteristics of high quality management include: 

Accuracy: data should be accurate and captured at the point of activity. 

Completeness: in order to add value to any organisation, information must be unique and distinctive.

Consistency: is key when entering data into a database.

Uniqueness: data should be captured as quickly as possible after the event or activity and must be available for the intended use within a reasonable time period.

Timeliness: data requirement should be clearly specified based on the information needs of the organisation and data collection processes matched to these requirements.

Define the relationship between a database and a database management system.

A database is the heart of an organisation, it stores key business information like; sales data, inventory data and student data. All businesses use a database of some type. Database management system (DMS) is the - software through which users and application programs interact with a database.

Describe the advantages an organisation can gain by using a database.

- Users will be able to access a large amount of information.

- This information can be used to solve problems, and it can also be used to increase profits in the company.

- Data is consistent

- The data is relevant and and organised in an efficient manner.

Define the fundamental concepts of the relational database model.

A relational database is a collection of tables from which data can be accessed in many different ways without having to recognise the database tables. That is, once relationships are created, tables can “talk” to eachother. We can link the tables to find for example, which students are in which class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2kbsG8zsLM

Describe the benefits of a data-driven website.

A data-driven-website is an interactive website kept constantly updated and relevant to the needs of its customers through the use of a database. Its benefits include:

- mimisation of human error

- future expandability

- An improved sustainablility

- Known to be more efficient

6. Describe the roles and purposes of data warehouses and data marts in an organisation.

Data warehouse is a logical collection of information, gathered from many different operational databases, that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks. Its purpose is: to aggregate information throughtout an organisation into single repository for decision making purposes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiRhRxPuEU8

A data mart is a subset of an organisational datastore, usually oriented to a specific purpose or major data subject, that may be distributed to support business needs.

Blog 5, Week 6

What is information architecture and what is information infrastructure and how do they differ and how to they relate to each other?

Information Architecture - Identifies where and how important information, such as customer records, is maintained and secured.

Infrastructure Architecure - Includes the hardware, software and telecommunications equipment.


Describe how an organisation can implement a solid information architecture
Backup and Recovery: Daily or hourly backups to storage servers.
Disaster Recovery: Plan for disasters so when they do occur the organisation is prepared. For example hot site or cold site.
Information Security: Managing users access, up to date antivirus software and patches.

List and Describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture.

• 1. Flexibility - Ability to handle multiple currencies and languages
• 2. Scalability - Refers to how well a system can adapt to increased demands
• 3. Reliability - ensures all systems are functioning correctly and providing accurate information
• 4. Availablity - addresses when systems can be accessed by users
• 5. Performance - measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction

Describe the business value in deploying a service oriented architecture

Service Orientated Architecture is a business driven IT architectural approac that supports integrating a business as linked, repeatable tasks or services.

It helps businesses innovate by ensuring that IT systems can adapt quickly, easily and economically to support rapidly changing business needs.

What is an event?

An event detects threats as well as opportunities while alerting those who can act on information.

What is a service? 

• Need to be reusable so it increases productivity
• Must find the right level of granularity
• Must appeal to a broad audience
• Loose Coupling - capability of services to be joined on demands to create composite services or disassembled just as easily into their functional components.
• Interoperability - capability of two or more computer systems to share data and resources.



What emerging technologies can companies use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively?

Virtualisation - framework for dividing the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments.

It allows people, processes and technology to work together more efficiently

Grid Computing - is an aggregation of geographically dispersed computing, storage and network resources.

Blog 4, Week 5

Chapter 4 Questions

Explain the ethical issues surrounding information technology.

Privacy - one of the largest ethical issues that faces organisations today. Privacy is in the interest of a person in protecting their life from unwanted intrusion and public scrutiny.
Confidentiality - is the principle that certain information will remain outside the public domain.

             

Intellectual property: the right to do, or omit to do, certain acts with intangible propertyollection of rights that protect creative and intellectual effort.

Copyright: the exclusive right to do, or omit to do, certain acts with intangible property, such as song, video games and some types of propriety documents.

Fair use doctrine: in certain situations, it is illegal to use copyright material.

Pirated software: the unauthorised use of duplication, distribution, or sale of copyrighted software.

Couunterfeit Software: software that is manufactured that is look like the real thing and sold as such.

Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey (2010)

 

Describe a situation involving technology that is ethical but illegal.

 

A pearson received an offer for a mobile phone service from AT&T Wireless. This offer revealed that AT&T Wireless had used Equifax, a credit reporting agency to identify Claire Pearson as a potential customer. The Fair Credit Reporting Act is the United States forbids repurposing credit information except when the information is used for “a firm offer or credit insurance”.

 

Describe and explain one of the computer use policies that a company might employee

Acceptable Use Policy: is a policy a user must agree to follow in order to be provided access to a network or to the internet. For example, school students or employees of a business.

Conditions are: Not using the service as part of violating any law

Not attempting to send junk email or spam to anyone who does not want to recieve it

Not attempting to break the security of the computer network or user

Not posting commercial messages to groups without prior permission

Not attempting to mail a bomb site.

 

What are the 5 main technology security risks?

Biometrics: Physical Characteristics

Tokens: Small electronic devices that change user passwords automatically.

Phishing: Fruadulent email that can gain personal information

Identity Theft: forging someone else's identity

Smart Card: Contains embedded technologies that can store information

Outline one way to reduce each risk.

• Encryption: scrambles information into an alternative form that requires a key or password to decrypt the information

What is a disaster recovery plan, what strategies might a firm employee?

A Disaster recovery plan is a detailed process for recovering information or an IT system in the event of a catastrophic disaster.

• Strategies:
• Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is a plan is a plan for how organisations will recover and restore their business after the disaster has occurred.
• Cold Site: does not have any any computer computer equipment, but employees can go there after the disaster has occurred. 
• Hot Site: separate and fully equipped facility where the company can go immediately after the disaster and resume their business.